PWN (verb)
1. An act of dominating an opponent.
Originally dates back to the days of WarCraft, when a map designer mispelled "Own" as "Pwn". What was originally supose to be "player has been owned." was "player has been pwned".
What used to be a bit of chest-thumping limited to the MMORPG world is now the basis for a system of government and a mandate from the masses. It's what Trump's fans most love about him and his style, it's the Left's perpetual demand for those it puts in power, and it's a formula used by fringe firebrands like AOC and the Squad, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, talking heads like Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann, and far too many more to name here.
All of them and more thrive on confrontation, division, discord, and perpetual finger-pointing. Meanwhile, with a divided government and razor thin margins in both houses of Congress, the only way anything is going to get done is with cooperation.
Politicians do what they want once elected, but who gets elected is ultimately up to the voters. When voters want a pwning partisan, that's what they're going to end up with. When the people on the Right want to "pwn the libtards," they're not apt to vote for sober and measured cooperators. When the Left wants to frogstomp the unwashed masses, they're not going to pick moderates and conciliators.
Pwners often turn on their own. The socialists of the Left rip any Democrat who even hints at cooperation. The savagers on the Right dub anyone who doesn't spend every minute ripping the Left (or who dares to criticize the Untethered Orange Id) as a RINO, no matter what.
Even Mitch McConnell, who was as skillful a Senate Majority leader as I can recall, and who spawned this hysterical meme,
is now the subject of wrath and ire from people who forget how good a job he did for their party. Simply because he isn't 100% about pwning the Dems.
People have to decide if they want the country to actually make some headway in fixing problems, or if it's more important to crush their neighbors under a boot.
Even if we exclude the fringes of the far-Left and angry-Right, who'd rather chew hot asphalt than purse harmony, there are enough Americans who'd be happier in a state of neighborliness than in perpetual rancor.
As the GOP's process of selecting a challenger to Biden proceeds, everyone should ask himself or herself: “do I want someone who'll fix things, or is my priority to see my person stand on the figurative corpses of my political counterparts?”